Honestly: the minimum wage does need to go up

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

This post got me thinking.

I am firmly in favor of:

A) A higher minimum wage in the whole US, and my home state of NY
B) Honesty in politics

While the OP I linked to is not exactly dishonest, it's not exactly honest either.
And this is not to put flak upon the poster there, but it's an example of political rhetoric that is used to leverage one side of a conversation, ignoring nuance.

the graphic in the linked to OP:

1) Doesn't seem to take into account state laws that raise min wage over fed laws
2) Doesn't take into account the vast difference in housing throughout a state

My objection is more with 2 than 1. 1 is easy to take care of, but 2 is not easy.

New York City is WAYYYY more expensive than Rochester or Buffalo, NY; or a large number of other places within the state I could name. Yet, this graphic gives us a number, presumably an average. But that average is way skewed. But how else should they do it? Give us on graphic for NYC and another for the rest of NY State? That wouldn't work either, because then you'd need to break it down for other cities and so on. So what do we do?

We must talk about things in the big picture without getting bogged down in details, otherwise we will have to talk for eons before we can understand what needs to be done. So while I agree that the min wage needs to go up, across the US, I have a problem with the info-graphics created to support that argument. They lack nuance, and as such, are deceiving. Even if they don't mean to be, and are honestly doing the best they can to compile and sort the data, the inevitability of misleading data is going to doom us all.

That said.
Happy saint patty's day.
Was I drunk when I wrote this? You decide.

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I guess lifting families out of poverty doesn't count as anything 'concrete'.

The minimum wage doesn't impact enough breadwinners for it to be about that. Unless you're conceding that those who favor a minimum wage increase are misinformed.

By definition, for you it IS arbitrary, because you don't care for the well-being of the people being affected by this.

There is no well-being benefit for this. It's a net negative because of the impacts.

Luckily for me, both history and nearly every economist agree with my interpretation for what an economy means to a society. Fortunately, nobody with any sense advocates what you advocate.

And your evidence?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

How many breadwinners does it take for it to matter?

you are willing to let ANYBODY fall through the cracks. thats disgusting and sad.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How many breadwinners does it take for it to matter?

Many, many, MANY more than what we currently have.

you are willing to let ANYBODY fall through the cracks. thats disgusting and sad.

No, I'm not - I want to get rid of the minimum wage, which causes so many to fall through the cracks.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

How many more? I want you to think about this.
Give me a number so you can reveal just how many people you think need to suffer before you feel like it's worth trying to help them.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

66%. A supermajority.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

jesus fucking christ.
you wouldnt be willing to help out 51%?

thats seriously sickening

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to help out 100% by abolishing the minimum wage.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

the facts do not support your statement, whatsoever.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How do you figure? We know the wages won't be zero. No one is going to work for a for-profit group for nothing.

So we know the wage will be greater than zero. Currently, the minimum wage completely ruins the negotiation aspect of entry-level and retail positions. There's no need to negotiate, since no one's going to get less than X, even though the job might be worth less than X. This then means that the jobs above that get overpaid/undernegotiated as a result - if a supervisory position gets $1 over minimum, it means that you're now distorting the wages further up the chain, and you've still removed the negotiation aspect for that as well.

So we have an option. We can maintain the unworkable status quo where the poorest and most needy individuals are told by the government what they must work for, and then watch as prices continue to rise and the dream remains out of reach, or we can really upend the process and empower the workers to actually negotiate for a truly fair wage, and watch as competition pushes prices back down to a reasonable level and/or wages actually rise to meet actual labor value.

I'm in favor of empowerment. You?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

You know, if we were all unionized, I might agree that we wouldnt need a min wage. But without unionized workplaces, the balance of power is in favor of the employer. That means that negotiations would end with people get less than they need to survive, cause hey, its better to miss one monthly bill then all of them.

You are empowering employers to fuck over their workers.
I am not in favor of that.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The minimum wage doesn't impact enough breadwinners for it to be about that. Unless you're conceding that those who favor a minimum wage increase are misinformed.

How is 'it doesn't affect enough people' an argument? Oh well it's only 6% of people who are suffering, so who cares? This isn't an argument. Oh hey only 2% get prostrate cancer, why should insurance cover it? Oh hey well fires only happen 2% of the time a year, why should we have a fire department?

There is no well-being benefit for this. It's a net negative because of the impacts.

Yes, I'm aware of our fundamental disagreements over the purpose of an economy and its intimate relationship with society. You don't believe it benefits anyone because you disjoint an economy from a society. People who make very little are just factors in an economy to you that don't deserve mention because their economic value is low. I don't believe that society benefits from people in poverty. We'll never agree. That's okay.

And your evidence?

We've had a minimum wage since 1938 and these predictions of doom have yet to come true. Then again you don't believe The New Deal happened so maybe it was never put into place, and is a recent concept! Maybe the first minimum wage was put in place in 2009 for history-denial libertarians.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How is 'it doesn't affect enough people' an argument?

You don't make wide-ranging changes in policies that have such large implications across the board for such a small number. It tells us that there are very few people impacted by it, so we can look at other ways to handle the situation.

Then again you don't believe The New Deal happened so maybe it was never put into place, and is a recent concept!

This is tiring when lankers does it, and it's tiring when you do it.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

You don't make wide-ranging changes in policies that have such large implications across the board for such a small number. It tells us that there are very few people impacted by it, so we can look at other ways to handle the situation.


How is it a wide-ranging change if it only affects 6% of the labor force? And an even smaller number: The employers of those 6%? How the fuck do you manage to keep this contradictory fucking opinion? How can something simultaneously be too small to care about but also will affect all these factors you keep brining up?

This is tiring when lankers does it, and it's tiring when you do it.

I'm still waiting for the explanation of the massive dismantling of The New Deal that occurred in 1938/1939.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How is it a wide-ranging change if it only affects 6% of the labor force?

The impact it has beyond those 6%. Everyone buys things, everyone gets piad a wage who works, etc.

How can something simultaneously be too small to care about but also will affect all these factors you keep brining up?

The target group is small. The implications are large. That's why it's a bad policy.

This is getting to be funny.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Everyone buys things, everyone gets piad a wage who works, etc.

So?

The target group is small. The implications are large. That's why it's a bad policy.

How does something that only affects a small group have large implications? What are the implications, precisely?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How does something that only affects a small group have large implications? What are the implications, precisely?

Look at Obamacare, for example. The idea to get everyone insured even though only about 15% of people actually lacked insurance. Thus we put in a policy that will increase health care costs for everyone, increase the debt, etc.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Are you claiming that the purpose of the health care bill was to "increase health care costs for everyone" and "increase the debt"? That this was the reason it was done?

I would like to personally know how removing the discrimination based on preexisting conditions or the cap on lifetime maximums have done either of these things. If people take care of health care problems when they're cheap instead of waiting until when it's expensive, and if more people are insured so that they pay for insurance themselves instead of the taxpayers footing the bill in the ER, is that not a source of reduced costs for both taxpayers and insurance owners? With these things in place, you can not claim that the bill was designed to do the things you mentioned. Honestly I haven't even gone over the finer points of the bill, and personally I think the individual mandate was a handout to the insurance industry, but there's no way anyone who wrote that thing designed it for adverse effects.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Are you claiming that the purpose of the health care bill was to "increase health care costs for everyone" and "increase the debt"? That this was the reason it was done?

Did I say that?

I would like to personally know how removing the discrimination based on preexisting conditions or the cap on lifetime maximums have done either of these things.

By getting rid of preexisting conditions, you're putting more expensive people into the system, raising prices for everyone.

By losing the cap on lifetime maximums, you're increasing the per-person cost of insurance and raising prices for everyone.

If people take care of health care problems when they're cheap instead of waiting until when it's expensive, and if more people are insured so that they pay for insurance themselves instead of the taxpayers footing the bill in the ER, is that not a source of reduced costs for both taxpayers and insurance owners?

Not always, and not necessarily. "Taking care of health problems" also means a lot of unnecessary tests and such that can often end up being more expensive in the long run than treating something as it arises.

Honestly I haven't even gone over the finer points of the bill, and personally I think the individual mandate was a handout to the insurance industry, but there's no way anyone who wrote that thing designed it for adverse effects.

The individual mandate was not something the insurer wanted, and it sucks up here in Massachusetts, but since no one claimed it was designed for adverse effects, you're fighting a strawman and once again failing to read what people put in front of you.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Not always, and not necessarily. "Taking care of health problems" also means a lot of unnecessary tests and such that can often end up being more expensive in the long run than treating something as it arises.

A fair point, but often unnecessary tests derive from a for-profit model. If your claim is that the bill treats the symptoms but not the disease, I would agree.

The individual mandate was not something the insurer wanted

How do you figure? How would insurers not love having all these people being forced to get private insurance?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

15%....more than 1 in 10

so presumably, going back just to grandparents, it's affected every family

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/busch/06/1938.html
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/The-End-of-the-New-Deal.topicArticleId-25238,articleId-25208.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/depression/section7.rhtml

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Your first link is from a biased source, but I appreciate that they tried sticking to the facts they liked. None of the programs in the 2nd link were mentioned, and the fact is, previous legislation that was upheld was not overturned. This makes a case that The New Deal slowed down, but not dismantled, because that word by definition is tearing something down, not preventing it from coming up. Anyway, enough was accomplished to save this country.

I love your second link.

Ironically, the president got what he wanted anyway. The Court upheld a number of programs of the Second New Deal, including the Social Security and Wagner Acts,

This has to be a lie because jeff claims The New Deal was dismantled. Are you calling jeff a liar?

This major slump was caused by the sharp cuts in federal spending that the administration thought were necessary to control the growing deficit and by a reduction in disposable income due to Social Security payroll taxes.

Whoops, cutting federal spending caused a huge slump during a recession? Funny, that's what Republicans argue we should do now to combat our recession.

The two major accomplishments during this period of the president's second term were the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act (February 1938) and the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the Wages and Hours Act (June 1938).

Sweet.

Third link: Go back a chapter.

1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA)
1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA) National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) Social Security Act
1936 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act Roosevelt is reelected
1937 United States Housing Authority (USHA)
1938 Second Agricultural Adjustment Act Fair Labor Standards Act

There it is! Since these weren't overturned (I know the last two weren't), I fail to see how this counts as a dismantling.

So while your first link just ignores the legislation that happened, I'm glad that your second two have supported what I've been saying all along. Cheers!

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Well, it's Jeff's argument, not mine. I just grabbed random links off Google.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Ah, so once again being contrarion for the sake of it. I look forward to the day when you actually plan to engage someone in a real discussion.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

No, I was trying to give you some idea of why he might be saying what he was saying, but I don't know for sure what his whole argument is.

As for your second sentence, that's insulting and dishonest.